Here is yet another example of why we need data privacy and rules to protect the data that is collected about us. In this case a person snooped on the mobile data history of potential dates before going out with them.
I work for one of the most popular mobile providers in the country. Back when I was dating a few months ago, I’d check the lad’s mobile data history at work to see what sort of porn they watch on their phones. Helped me to weed out and ghost a couple of freaks
This is absolutely an invasion of privacy but still something a lot of us would do if we had the access to a system that gives us this information. I mean it is human nature to be curious and if we could most people would end up doing something like this and that is why Banks have strict policies and controls around looking up data that you shouldn’t be looking into like financial transactions or bank balances.
It would have expected the ‘most popular’ mobile provider to have controls around who can access such data. But even if the controls limit who can access the data it doesn’t solve the full problem because it doesn’t stop the people authorized to view the data from misusing it. The latin phrase ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?‘ (Who will watch the watchmen?) highlights this problem. People who have official access can (and do) misuse that access and we have seen this misuse multiple times, folks in law enforcement have used their access to track and research their significant others, other folks have stalked celebrities and there are many more such examples..
That is why in addition to restricting access there needs to be a regular audit of the access requests made into the system and sign off to ensure people are not misusing the data. In my previous companies, we had to review audit logs for production access and sign off on the access (for the systems we were responsible for). For obvious reasons people couldn’t signoff on their own access requests.
Data Privacy is very important and because of the amount of data that companies collect about us it is a dangerous situation. In the ideal world they would not be storing this data in the first place but since that is not going to happen anytime soon we need to ensure that we build legal/technical frameworks around the systems so that the potential for misuse is reduced.
– Suramya